Almaden’s Collective IQ Platform Adds Virtual Concierge and Integrates with Microsoft Teams
Almaden Inc. has updated its digital employee experience solution, Collective IQ.One of the new features is an integration with Microsoft Teams that allows IT teams to find performance and productivity issues quickly, collecting data from users’ audio, video, screen-sharing, call quality, and experience. This can create a Teams user experience score and pinpoint unreported issues.
“The importance of communication and collaboration platforms to keep operations connected and productive is clear. Microsoft Teams is now a corporate mainstay with over 270 million users daily. By monitoring and correlating technical data with user sentiment, CIQ integration with Microsoft Teams will enable IT Staff to quickly spot and resolve bad experiences across the company,” says Leandro Silva, Almaden’s Chief Operating Officer.
Another significant addition is Alma, a virtual concierge, Alma, has also been added to the platform. Users can now send a message to Alma via Microsoft Teams chat to report issues or request help. Alma can also proactively detect problems and suggest through the chat what the user could do to resolve issues.
Confirm Introduces Auto-Calibration Solution for Employee Performance Reviews
Confirm, a startup that focuses on combining science and performance reviews to ensure data-based job advancement, has enhanced its platform with an auto-calibration feature. This feature helps support fairer and data-driven performance reviews.
“Confirm’s mission is to rehaul the broken and biased performance review process that is the norm at most companies,” says Josh Merrill, Co-founder and CEO of Confirm. “We want to make the entire process easier and less time consuming for managers; software and automation now makes that possible. With Confirm Auto-calibration, we are introducing a first for the industry that will save companies thousands of hours. Most importantly, this feature will help quell the loudest voice in the room phenomenon, which means a fairer performance review process for all.”
Confirm Auto-calibration can run a series of checks on each manager rating after reviews are submitted by employees, and it also identifies the subset of employees companies need to focus calibration discussions around. These checks are an amalgamation of a rule set defined by the customer and what Confirm learns about the employee’s performance through Organizational Network Analysis (ONA). Businesses using Confirm Auto-calibration can import the rule set they typically apply in calibrations, such as checking for reviewer biases, into the tool. This ONA approach to employee performance reviews leverages the network model of work where all employees can provide input on who at their company they turn to for advice and help, and who they believe is doing outstanding work. Analysis can then spot the linkages and trends to identify top performers. It enables performance reviews to be based on larger sets of data rather than only the opinions of a single manager.
Team Check-In and Listening Tool Launched by Engagedly
Aiming to support a hybrid workforce, Engagedly has introduced Team Pulse, a tool that combines employee listening tools and team-manager check-ins. Team Pulse offers a recurring set of questions that are sent out to employees on a pre-determined frequency, allowing organizations to determine issues and stumbling blocks on a cadence that allows for more timely action.
“Today, organizations and managers need listening tools to truly understand and get the right feedback from employees to bring to light key issues and help them take the right initiatives, promptly without having to wait a year for engagement surveys to come in,” says Sri Chellappa, Founder/President at Engagedly.
Gympass Partners with Headspace Health, Adding to Wellness Offering
Gympass has partnered with Headspace Health, adding the latter’s mindfulness and meditation-based wellness offering to its suite of wellbeing apps and services. Headspace will be found in the Mind category on Gympass, a segment that has grown by 233% since 2020.
“The spotlight has been placed on mental health at work. Our mindfulness and meditation resources are a wonderful way for companies to help cultivate healthier employees and more productive teams,” says Russell Glass, CEO, Headspace Health. “We are thrilled to work alongside Gympass in helping people all around the world to prioritize their mental health and wellbeing, and to help employers make smarter leadership and benefits decisions to support their most important investment: their people.”
Headspace has more than 1,000 hours of premium mindfulness content, from guided meditations, to sleep, focus, and movement exercises. According to the company, studies have shown four sessions of Headspace reduced burnout by 14% and 10 days of Headspace resulted in 14% decrease in stress and 16% increase in positivity.
“Today’s employees aren’t willing to put their mental health and wellbeing at risk in favor of a paycheck – and that’s not just my assumption. In our 2022 State of Work-Life Wellness Report we found that wellbeing is just as important as salary for more than 80% of employees globally. This indicates a massive shift in mindset that has only been accelerated by the past few years,” says Cesar Carvalho, CEO and co-founder of Gympass.”
Medallia and Eagle Hill Collaborate
Medallia and Eagle Hill have partnered to provide customers with EX and CX services and solutions, combining Eagle Hill’s human-centered design services with Medallia’s Experience Cloud technology.
“Our new partnership with Medallia is important because our customers now have a one-stop shop for the most innovative, end-to-end employee experience services,” says Melissa Jezior, president and chief executive officer of Eagle Hill Consulting. “This partnership marries the best of Eagle Hill and Medallia – the highest quality employee experience strategies that are informed by Medallia’s proprietary AI technology. For example, using the Medallia technology, our experts now can better identify the root causes of employee experience issues and quickly develop and implement solutions that can strengthen both the employee and customer experience.
“We are thrilled to partner with Eagle Hill Consulting given the organization’s extensive experience in both the commercial sector and among public agencies,” says Rory Cameron, chief marketing and corporate development officer with Medallia. “We look forward to working together to continue improving the employee experience.”
Nexthink Partners with Giza Systems; Joins AWS ISV Accelerate Program
Nexthink has chosen Giza Systems as a strategic partner for the Middle East and Africa. The partnership will encompass supporting joint government and enterprise customers as they progress on digital transformation.
Organizations leveraging Nexthink technology will have access to advanced EX insights which can give IT admins a single view to allow for proactivity and sometimes even automatic resolution.
“Nexthink provides reliable digital tools and proactive IT support solutions that offer organisations real-time insights into their IT infrastructure. This helps companies understand any performance issues and resolve them – ensuring employees stay productive at all times. We are glad to partner with Giza Systems as they have the strong expertise and market leading capabilities, which will help us meet our business objectives and expand our presence in the region,” says Maged Eid, Area VP – META, Nexthink.
Mohamed Abourayya Partners & Alliances Director, Giza Systems, says, “Employees are more engaged and productive when organizations’ culture and set-up support their teams with the right systems, software, and tools to promote a more conducive and collaborative work environment. Nexthink is the leader in digital employee experience management software enhancing employees’ daily activities. We are glad to partner with Nexthink; and we believe that, together, we can enable our customers in their digital transformation journey.”
Earlier in January, Nexthink joined the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Accelerate Program. This allows for collaboration with the AWS sales organization, and for AWS customers brings direct access to Nexthink’s digital employee experience offerings. Nexthink helps bring visibility into employee issue detection, diagnosis, and remediation allowing IT to gain awareness of and fix issues before they become critical.
Author Information
As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.
She brings more than 20 years of experience in technology research and marketing; prior to her current role, she was a Research Analyst at Omdia, authoring market and ecosystem reports on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and User Interface technologies. Sherril was previously Manager of Market Research at Intrado Life and Safety, providing competitive analysis and intelligence, business development support, and analyst relations.
Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.
